Uber Rant

OK, time for an UBER rant I think.

Where do I start? It’s been too long since the last real rant I don’t know where to begin, so lets split it up.

Fellow staff.

We have one teacher that is so fucking annoying to talk to. Why? Basically any time you do, when he has something in his hand he bangs it on the table every few seconds or so. Even in meetings he does it. For me that is so distracting its unreal, I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it to hi or not. I am really tempted to but I know its quite petty so will bite my tongue for the moment until I can stand it no more J

Another teacher in my group is habitually late to collect his class. Like my old school we have been told to collect the kids from their homerooms, take them to our classrooms and return them afterwards. Apparently this is beneath him and he is almost always late coming to pick them up meaning I and the other teachers are delaying our classes to make sure his kids are not left on his own. When he does come, he just ambles up and lets the kids in the classroom run up to him not matter if anyone else if trying to collect their class. Result? Chaos and kids just milling around in one big huddle. Then once outside the class he doesn’t bother keeping his class in order and they run ahead “It doesn’t matter. They know where to go!” Yeh, fine but in the meantime I am trying to control my lot and they are being mixed up with your lot.

I started off having quite a good schedule and for once here having under the normal allotted hours. I was told that I would have to do cover classes to make up the time. Sometimes I would win and not have to do any and sometimes I would. OK, not too bad! But then another teacher finds out he can’t take / handle 14 kids. So what happens? His class gets split and I have to take over 7 kids. Another 4 friggin hours which admittedly brings me up to the requirement but it leaves me working 5 lessons in a row on one day and 4 lessons in a row on 2 others. It also means my “best” day is a Monday with 3 lessons. Unfortunately this means I can and have been lumbered with doing cover lessons on Monday as more people tend to be off on that day than any other day surprise surprise. Compared to others I have a light day and therefore I am more likely to be free. FUCK!!!! In other words I could consistently be working more hours than other teachers.

Cover lessons

This brings up another point. Although every teacher has an allocation of 20 contact hours per week, we have to do 2 cover lessons for free before we get paid for the third one and up. Bastards!!! They didn’t mention this one.

Oh yes, doing a cover isn’t by asking for volunteers, it’s done by the boss who sees who is free and then tells the person they are doing a cover. It doesn’t matter if you had something planned, you are doing it. I got landed with 2 covers when I was sick as a dog and it was tough luck, just do them.

Paperwork, Tax & Withholding

Well, so much for an easy transfer of work permit and teachers licence from one school to another. It’s the same old stupid story. Lets just apply for everything right from the beginning and get everybody to kill 3 trees in the process with all the photocopying that has to be done. Dear lord. It took me about 25 minutes to sign all the photocopies. Yup that’s right, don’t forget you have to sign any photocopy you make to make it an “official” copy. Then we have to get 2 new medical certificates – but not at the same time. We have to wait until we are told to go get one. Then we will be told to go get the other one. And on top of that, we have to use one particular hospital. I was always told that the medical certs were valid for 3 months. Based on what they were saying, all the permits and licences will be issued by then. What’s the problem? It’s not like we are some small fly by night school. We are one of Thailand’s’ best. Copyright all the schools in Thailand who want to charge more for the same thing.

My take on the matter has been (through reading ajarn and thaivisa ) that officially tax is not due to be paid until the work permit is being processed and issued. We have found out today that the school is taking it straight off from the get go. But typically for Thailand, they have been taking different amounts from different people even though we are paid the same. Yeesh.

Also our immediate joy at finding out that they had taken tax instead of the withholding money ( 20,000B over 5 months ) was soon short lived. We found out in the afternoon that it was a “welcome” to the school arrangement and the withholding would start next month. So a double whammy for 5 months - tax and withholding! The best part of 7k a month gone and no money for less than 3 covers a week. Jesus, this pay raise isn’t turning out to be a raise at all.

Misc

We have actually got a reasonable amount of pcs to work with for the amount of teachers and so far it had been going reasonably well with people using them for work and email and moving off when others wanted to work. But now it’s gone up in big bold letters above each pc that they are only to be used to work only and the message was repeated in a meeting today. If we want to look at emails etc we have to use 1 pc between 30 of us. HUH!?! That’s about 2 minutes per day then before we start work, lunch hours and breaks. There goes another perk. It’s not as though anyone was on them all day looking at the news and so on preventing anyone from using them for work. So the result is they are going to have 6 pcs sitting there unused 90% of the day. Another case of looks over substance?

I leave the kids until tomorrow.